Few days ago the version 2.6 of WordPress was released. There are no big changes from the 2.5.1 to the 2.6, at least not noticeable ones like when we moved from 2.3.3 to 2.5. So it is time to upgrade your WordPress blogs if youd didn’t upgrade yet. If you are not an experienced user with WordPress perhaps you feel a bit scary about this process but it has nothing to fear about it. Check out this article about How To Upgrade Your WordPress To The Latest Version, and also you can take an eye at my Free WordPress Guide.

Why You Should Upgrade?

If your current version (not the latest one) works properly and you are not an experienced user surely that you are wondering this question…Why should I do it? Well, in spite of working well and apparently without problems normally every piece of software, every system has hidden bugs, sometimes bigger ones and sometimes smaller ones, and most of them are vulnerabilities, the ones that can provide access to the system. Imagine that your house has the back wall made of papier-mâché, you know, that material that looks like stone but it is paper indeed. At first glance there is not problem due to: first, the wall is hidden because it is at the back side, and second, it looks like stone. Who would know that your house is completely vulnerable? But would you sleep calmly knowing that your house back wall is made of paper? Sooner or later a thief will discover that there is free access to your home. And the richer you are the more thieves you’ll have around your house looking for a way to enter inside and steal your worth properties.

With software (yes, WordPress is software too) happens the same. If there is a bug inside sooner or later an skilled hacker will gain the access to your system. This is the reason why periodically there is a new version of an specific application. These new versions solve bugs detected in previous ones so it is dangerous to have outdated software. And the more important your blog is the closer you can be investigated by dangerous people that want to know if you have outdated your WordPress of any of your plugins to exploit a bug of a specific version. It happens from time to time that a big and well known blog is hacked, even with the latest versions of everything. We can’t avoid all crimes but we can improve our defenses.

What do you think now? Are you still lazy about upgrading your WordPress?

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Everybody should know how important is to have all the stuff upgraded to the last version. Normally the most important objetive of upgrades is to solve security problems and this is the main reason to be up to date.

If you have WordPress surely you know how to install it, in other case you have here my WordPress Guide. But perhaps you have never updated your WordPress and you are not sure how to do it. Don’t worry because it is simpler that you think. Here are the steps you must follow in order to have you WordPress blog protected against security bugs:

1. First of all you have to make a backup of your database. If you don’t know how to do it take a look at my article about the WordPress Database Backup Plugin.
2. Download the last version of WordPress, you have it available here.
3. You should deactivate all of your active plugins. The reason is for possible compatibility issues. Before doing it it’s a good oportunity to upgrade them to their last version.
4. Now you have to upload all the files and folders of the new version to your blog folder except the wp-content directory and the wp-config-sample.php file. Don’t overwrite of modify your wp-config.php file, ok? Keep this file as it is in your server because it contains the information needed to connect with the database. You also have to keep your wp-content folder because as it is because it stores all your plugins and themes so in case of overwriting it you could lose your own modifications in case that you have made some.
5. Before v2.5 you had to write the URL http://yourblog.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php in your navbar to start the upgrade process but after that version WordPress detects that there are files of a new version and it automatically shows the upgrade page, you just have to follow the simple instructions, there is only one step which upgrades your database scheme but you only have to press one button.

And we have finished! You have your WordPress blog upgraded to the last version. Check out that your blog works properly. Now you have to reactivate again your plugins but it is advised to do it one by one, this way if there is any compatibility problem you’ll know which one doesn’t work with the last version of WP.

There is something else. It is available a plugin that can do all these steps for you: WordPress Automatic Upgrade. I don’t use it because I prefer to have the total control over the upgrading process, but most people that use it like this plugin. If you decide to install and use this plugin I recommend you to deactivate the automated mode. This way you must to start the upgrading process manually but you can chose when to do it, I mean when you know that the new version has been tested by other users and it is safe to use it. Why I recommend this? Because sometimes a new version comes with some undetected important bugs and it is preferable to wait for a version that have that problems solved. Don’t worry because it doesnt happen frequently, but for example when the v2.5 was released it came with some serious problems and I waited to the v2.5.1 to upgrade.

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Sometimes, and I say sometimes, I embed a video or two but I don’t like to use them too much. Videos, leaving apart video blogging, are easy content when you have nothing to say. However I embedded enough videos to realise that WordPress has some kind of problem with Youtube. I can’t tell you if this happens with other video services because till now I’ve only used Youtube.

For this reason I started to look for any plugin that could help me with this issue. I’m not going to lie to you, I didn’t test more than one because this first plugin worked easy and perfectly: Smart Youtube, developed by Vladimir Prelovac.

I found it at the Official WordPress Plugin Directory and it was one of the best rated with 5 stars and more than 16K downloads.

The installation is as simple as ever but If you don’t know how to do it check out this article about installation of themes and plugins.

Finally the use is easier than you think. You only need the URL of the Youtube video you want to embed, for example in my post of the Euro Cup 2008 Championship Celebration I embedded the following two:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIfevx0rcts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVW-V6Lb3zg

You have to place those URLs wherever you want them to appear but you have to change “http://” to “httpv://“, notice the v added in the text, and without doing anything else automatically when you publish the post these URLs will be replaced with the videos. The change will be also made in your feeds.

It is easy, doesn’t it? Now you won’t have problems when you want to embed Youtube videos in your posts.

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Sometimes you want your visitors know something and also you want to remind them that thing every time they come. There are several ways to put in front of them that advertisement, for example with 125×125 ads. The problem with this is that you have to design a button and perhaps you are not skilled in designing arts. There are easier ways. Today I introduce you this interesting plugin: MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad. You can see it in the following picture:

Surely you have seen the red stripe on top of the picture and if you are reading this post during the current week you can see that stripe on top of the blog advertising my contest to win 300 Entrecard credits.

The plugin shows a highly customizable stripe over the header of your blog. It is easy to install and easy to customize. You can put in rotation several ads and giving them different weight. You can choose the color of the stripe and text, and also you have and advanced options about how many times do you want to show it or if you want to hide it after the first visit.

The only black point I found on the plugin is that there is a link to MaxBlogPress added in the bar and there is no option to remove it. At least the plugin is for free, but perhaps someone doesn’t mind to pay for get it free of links.

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I was looking for something like this, a plugin which allows visitor to submit your posts to social bookmarking sites. But I didn’t want to use javascript like other plugins do, I like to keep my blog as clean as possible of different kind of source code or flash or whatever you like. This one is 100% made of php.

It is easy to install and configure and you can choose among more than 40 bookmarking sites to show with every post. This plugin is available here: Social Bookmarking Reloaded Plugin.

Now you can digg my posts or technorati them of whatever you line

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